Fiona Paul - Belladonna

For a long time, they sat in silence as heavy as the darkness around them. The sounds of dripping, the echoes of voices from the hall, the occasional scrabble of a rat’s feet against the stone—all of it seemed amplified.

“I’m sorry,” Siena blurted out suddenly. “About Luca. About how I . . . about the way I . . .”

She trailed off. Cass reached out and squeezed Siena’s hand. Cass had caught Siena with one of Luca’s monogrammed handkerchiefs on Madalena’s wedding day. She had known instantly what the token—and Siena’s mortification—had meant. Siena was in love with Luca. Perhaps she always had been, even when she was a mere scullery maid and he was just a boy who visited San Domenico occasionally with his parents.

Cass had been shocked, but not angry. Stunned, but not jealous. She thought of the feelings that had developed so quickly between her and Falco. She was no stranger to forbidden love.

For a brief instant, Cass allowed herself to think of him. She still had feelings for him. If there had been any doubt, it had evaporated the instant she saw him in the garden with Belladonna. Falco’s hand lingering on Belladonna’s bare skin. Bella’s hungry look. The pain, the rage—it was a wave, threatening to drown her. But was that what love was supposed to be? Pain? Madness? Or was love something more like what she felt for Luca? Something that motivated a person to be selfless and even self-sacrificing.

“You can’t help how you feel, Siena,” Cass said gently. Her heart swelled, making her chest feel tight.

Several more beats of silence passed. When Siena spoke again, her voice was trembling. “Signorina Cass, you have been so good to me, so good to my sister. I just want you to know, in case anything happens, that I—” Her voice cracked. “That I love you. Like family.”

Cass squeezed Siena’s hand again. “Me too,” she whispered. Both girls were silent for a few moments. “You can try to sleep, if you like,” Cass said. “I’ll keep watch.”

“Sleep? I’m so nervous, I may never sleep again.”

“I feel the exact same way.” Cass leaned her head back against the wall. The room was completely dark. Even if a servant did come to fetch wine, the light from a single candle or lantern would not give away their hiding place.

“What do you think Feliciana is doing right now?” Cass asked after a minute. Anything to keep from thinking about everything that could go wrong.

“Probably breaking the hearts of peasants and schoolboys all over Florence,” Siena said, and Cass heard a smile in her voice. “If Signora Alioni thinks she’s a distraction to the serving boys now, just wait until her hair and her curves start to come back.”

The minutes crawled by, expanding slowly into hours. Periodically, Siena would creep from her hiding spot and open the heavy door just far enough to peek out into the corridor, to judge the time of day via the light from the hallway windows. The third time she did, she came back to where Cass sat and held out her hands. “I think it’s late enough,” she said, pulling Cass to her feet.

There was a damp spot on Cass’s skirt from where water had leached through the stone floor, and her legs and feet were numb from sitting for so long. She tucked a few stray tendrils of hair up under her simple gray bonnet and let the black silk veil fall in front of her face. She stamped her feet to try to regain sensation in them. Siena lowered the veil on her hat too. Cass couldn’t help but realize how odd her handmaid looked dressed in black instead of blue, with her pale face obscured. It was as if Siena had become someone else, a stranger. She had always thought of Siena the way she thought of Luca: steady, dependable, unchanging.

Maybe she was wrong—about everyone and everything.

They stood inside the door, listening for sounds in the hallway. Cass’s heart started galloping in her chest. Siena opened the door a crack and both girls peeked out. The hallway was dim. An iron lantern hung from a peg at the end of the corridor. It would give them just enough light to navigate by.

Cass took a deep breath and slipped into the hall. Siena followed, and the two girls crept down the wide corridor. Cass’s leather slippers made only the faintest thwap on the marble floor, but to her each footstep was a thunderclap. She was certain that a battalion of palace soldiers would rise up out of the darkness to arrest them at any moment.

Siena nudged Cass toward the Hall of the Three Chiefs. They found the service stairwell that led down into the dungeons. With trembling hands, Cass reached up and slid the lantern from its peg. She was so scared, she nearly dropped it, and Siena reached out, steadying her hand. Cass didn’t know how Siena could keep so calm, but she tightened her grip on the lantern and choked back the fear in her throat.

The temperature dropped as the girls descended the stairs. The dungeon was black as death. The scents of mold and feces swirled around them, and tears rose in Cass’s eyes. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to run away. She wanted to scream. Clanking and moaning filled the air. Cass wondered if Belladonna had been right, if these twisting corridors were crawling with ghosts.

She forced herself to keep going.

At the bottom of the staircase, Cass and Siena paused, listening for sounds of patrolling guards. The water, Cass noticed, was already seeping into the prison. Her leather slippers were almost completely submerged. She struggled to walk without making sharp sloshing sounds.

The pozzi was shaped like a square, its block of cells arranged so that no prisoner could look out the tiny grate in his door and see anything but a blank wall. A single corridor ran around the perimeter of the prison. Each wooden cell door was recessed in the stone walls and held closed by a lock and two thick dead bolts.

“How will we ever find Luca?” Siena asked. For the first time, she sounded afraid.

Cass didn’t answer. She held her lantern up to the tiny barred window in the first door. A man lay on a raised stone platform, naked except for a tattered pair of breeches. Bruises and bite marks covered his torso.

The man sat up when he saw the lantern’s light. “The water is coming,” he said, leering at her. “Afterward, the vermin.”

Cass lowered the lantern quickly. The water was only up to her ankles. Plenty of time. Siena gripped her elbow and piloted her forward. In the next cell, a man squatted over a silver bucket. Cass quickly passed on. Next—a man slept on the raised platform. The fourth cell appeared to be empty.

But just as she turned away, a figure launched itself at the door. “Angels,” the voice rasped. “Have you come to free me?”

Cass backed up quickly, pulling Siena with her. But the man began to bang on the door of his cell. “Angels,” he cried out. “They’ve come to free us all!”

“Shh,” she hissed. But the man continued to bang on his door, and several other voices picked up the chant: “Angels!” They screeched, clawing at their doors. “Angels of mercy!”

Just then, Cass saw light from around the next corner. A guard shouted, “Settle down, all of you!”

Quickly, she extinguished her lantern and retreated with Siena into a recessed portion of the corridor. The two girls stood with their backs against the damp wall. Boots sloshed through the water, drawing closer. Cass’s heart beat three times for each footstep. She held her breath, terrified the guard might actually be able to hear her blood racing through her body.

“What are you going on about?” The guard knocked harshly on the doors he passed; abruptly, the prisoners fell silent. Only one of them spoke up—the man who had given the alarm.

“Angels,” he hissed. “They’ve come to set us free.”